christian
20th October 2019, 18:35
I want to bring to your attention some shocking information about the activities of the Chinese government. The source of this information is Quilette, an online news site that has been founded in 2015. Quilette is focused "on science, technology, news, culture, and politics […] [and] associated with the 'intellectual dark web,'" according to Wikipedia. 'Intellectual darb web' is a term coined by Eric Weinstein and "refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political correctness in the media and academia," again according to Wikipedia.
I found this article very informative, I'm impressed with Quilette and with the author of this particular article, Aaron Sarin, when I checked out his other work about modern-day power structures and the nation state. So I'm excited to share three paragraphs of Aaron Sarin's article here:
Today, the Communist Party stifles criticism and dictates policy far beyond Chinese borders, controlling NGOs and businesses, silencing dissidents, and filling Western university boards with CCP sympathisers. Academic institutions are increasingly reliant on Chinese money—$12.55 billion in student tuition fees in 2016—and so it’s easy to buy their silence. “We don’t talk about Taiwan independence,” says Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. “We don’t talk about the occupation of Tibet. We don’t call the June 4 Massacre ‘massacre.’” The same subjects are off-limits for British lecturers, who have been warned by staff from London’s Chinese embassy that they should never talk about “the three Ts” (Tibet, Tiananmen, and Taiwan). Those who do stray into the forbidden areas of discussion are summarily punished. Funding was removed for visiting scholars at the University of California San Diego in response to the Dalai Lama’s appearance at the university. The Communist Party considers him to be an “enemy element,” and it will not tolerate its business associates maintaining any kind of relationship with him.
The Party’s iron grip extends to society far beyond academia. Many foreign companies with business interests in China have been forced to apologise for referring to Taiwan or Tibet in the ‘wrong’ terms. The German manufacturer Leica made the mistake of referring to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in one of its adverts, and was forced to issue a full apology. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologise for quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. The quote itself was as banal as you might expect: “Look at the situation from all angles, and you will become more open.” But Party stooges quickly registered their displeasure online, and so Mercedes-Benz deleted the offending post, adopted the penitent posture, and issued the ritual confession: “We will promptly take steps to deepen our understanding of Chinese culture and values, our international staff included, to help standardise our actions to ensure this sort of issue doesn’t happen again.”
This craven behaviour is making the Party confident—so confident, in fact, that it has begun arresting the citizens of other countries. A Swedish citizen was abducted in Thailand and flown to China after publishing books critical of the Chinese authorities, and a British citizen from Hull was snatched in Beijing airport and jailed for comments he’d made on Facebook. He was on his way from the Philippines to the UK and only stopping off briefly in the airport, but he ended up spending two weeks in prison for the crime of “not being a friend to China.” The Party’s thugs have physically assaulted journalists in the US for publishing anti-CCP content, they have kidnapped and tortured booksellers in Hong Kong, and they have attempted to murder independent journalists in Australia. They locked British businessman Peter Humphrey into an iron chair inside a steel cage and drugged him in order to elicit a confession. They hounded New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady, punishing her for researching the CCP’s foreign influence by sending their goons to break into her home in Christchurch, tamper with her car, burgle her office, and send her threatening letters.
"When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party", Aaron Sarin, Quilette, 22 Jul 2019 (https://quillette.com/2019/07/22/when-the-lion-wakes-the-global-threat-of-the-chinese-communist-party/)
During my time as a student of Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, I attended a panel discussion with a represetative of the Chinese government in 2008 or so. I was impressed then about how unapologetic he was about the Tibet issue, completely denying Tibetan history and culture and just pretending it's always been China. It was so weird to hear that in Germany, a supposedly free country, and you could see that everybody in the room was so taken aback while he was visibly angry that anybody would dare bring up Tibet. I wonder if such a discussion would still take place in that university today.
Last year, a Chinese friend in Berlin told me that his parents asked him if he would like to come back to China at some point. I asked him what he responded and without a millisecond of hesitation he burst out "never!"
Another Chinese friend, an artist based in Beijing, is desperately looking for ways to leave the country. She says people in China "have no soul," the environmental situation is terrible, there is no freedom, it just goes on and on.
I truly admire Chinese history. The Daodejing, the Zhuangzi and some other Chinese classics are my all-time-favorite books. But when I had the chance to learn Chinese at university and maybe eventually live and work in China, I figured it would break my heart to go there because of the political situation. I learned Mongolian instead, and I'm still very glad about this. Of course, if you look at other countries, they are no beacons of freedom and human rights either, but from all I can gather, China is truly a hellhole to live in.
Whether or not China is really such a threat after all, I don't know. It all seems so orchestrated to me in a way. David Rockefeller's infamous 1970's New York Times article "From a China Traveller," praising the Chinese governement. China getting all these UN awards. The economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping that turned China into the world's factory for whatnot certainly had the blesing of the West's power elites in one way or another. And with so much mismanagement that destroys the Chinese environment to the point where it's seriously questionable how long it's gonna be possible to sustain agriculture and to provide their people with drinking water, I really wonder how dangerous the Chinese government really is and how much it's just another puppet in a global theater play.
Portray China as the villain, distract from the loss of liberty in other countries around the world, have wars among the countries to keep people poor, distracted and subservient to their governments.
I found this article very informative, I'm impressed with Quilette and with the author of this particular article, Aaron Sarin, when I checked out his other work about modern-day power structures and the nation state. So I'm excited to share three paragraphs of Aaron Sarin's article here:
Today, the Communist Party stifles criticism and dictates policy far beyond Chinese borders, controlling NGOs and businesses, silencing dissidents, and filling Western university boards with CCP sympathisers. Academic institutions are increasingly reliant on Chinese money—$12.55 billion in student tuition fees in 2016—and so it’s easy to buy their silence. “We don’t talk about Taiwan independence,” says Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. “We don’t talk about the occupation of Tibet. We don’t call the June 4 Massacre ‘massacre.’” The same subjects are off-limits for British lecturers, who have been warned by staff from London’s Chinese embassy that they should never talk about “the three Ts” (Tibet, Tiananmen, and Taiwan). Those who do stray into the forbidden areas of discussion are summarily punished. Funding was removed for visiting scholars at the University of California San Diego in response to the Dalai Lama’s appearance at the university. The Communist Party considers him to be an “enemy element,” and it will not tolerate its business associates maintaining any kind of relationship with him.
The Party’s iron grip extends to society far beyond academia. Many foreign companies with business interests in China have been forced to apologise for referring to Taiwan or Tibet in the ‘wrong’ terms. The German manufacturer Leica made the mistake of referring to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in one of its adverts, and was forced to issue a full apology. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologise for quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. The quote itself was as banal as you might expect: “Look at the situation from all angles, and you will become more open.” But Party stooges quickly registered their displeasure online, and so Mercedes-Benz deleted the offending post, adopted the penitent posture, and issued the ritual confession: “We will promptly take steps to deepen our understanding of Chinese culture and values, our international staff included, to help standardise our actions to ensure this sort of issue doesn’t happen again.”
This craven behaviour is making the Party confident—so confident, in fact, that it has begun arresting the citizens of other countries. A Swedish citizen was abducted in Thailand and flown to China after publishing books critical of the Chinese authorities, and a British citizen from Hull was snatched in Beijing airport and jailed for comments he’d made on Facebook. He was on his way from the Philippines to the UK and only stopping off briefly in the airport, but he ended up spending two weeks in prison for the crime of “not being a friend to China.” The Party’s thugs have physically assaulted journalists in the US for publishing anti-CCP content, they have kidnapped and tortured booksellers in Hong Kong, and they have attempted to murder independent journalists in Australia. They locked British businessman Peter Humphrey into an iron chair inside a steel cage and drugged him in order to elicit a confession. They hounded New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady, punishing her for researching the CCP’s foreign influence by sending their goons to break into her home in Christchurch, tamper with her car, burgle her office, and send her threatening letters.
"When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party", Aaron Sarin, Quilette, 22 Jul 2019 (https://quillette.com/2019/07/22/when-the-lion-wakes-the-global-threat-of-the-chinese-communist-party/)
During my time as a student of Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, I attended a panel discussion with a represetative of the Chinese government in 2008 or so. I was impressed then about how unapologetic he was about the Tibet issue, completely denying Tibetan history and culture and just pretending it's always been China. It was so weird to hear that in Germany, a supposedly free country, and you could see that everybody in the room was so taken aback while he was visibly angry that anybody would dare bring up Tibet. I wonder if such a discussion would still take place in that university today.
Last year, a Chinese friend in Berlin told me that his parents asked him if he would like to come back to China at some point. I asked him what he responded and without a millisecond of hesitation he burst out "never!"
Another Chinese friend, an artist based in Beijing, is desperately looking for ways to leave the country. She says people in China "have no soul," the environmental situation is terrible, there is no freedom, it just goes on and on.
I truly admire Chinese history. The Daodejing, the Zhuangzi and some other Chinese classics are my all-time-favorite books. But when I had the chance to learn Chinese at university and maybe eventually live and work in China, I figured it would break my heart to go there because of the political situation. I learned Mongolian instead, and I'm still very glad about this. Of course, if you look at other countries, they are no beacons of freedom and human rights either, but from all I can gather, China is truly a hellhole to live in.
Whether or not China is really such a threat after all, I don't know. It all seems so orchestrated to me in a way. David Rockefeller's infamous 1970's New York Times article "From a China Traveller," praising the Chinese governement. China getting all these UN awards. The economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping that turned China into the world's factory for whatnot certainly had the blesing of the West's power elites in one way or another. And with so much mismanagement that destroys the Chinese environment to the point where it's seriously questionable how long it's gonna be possible to sustain agriculture and to provide their people with drinking water, I really wonder how dangerous the Chinese government really is and how much it's just another puppet in a global theater play.
Portray China as the villain, distract from the loss of liberty in other countries around the world, have wars among the countries to keep people poor, distracted and subservient to their governments.